Press release

Iris Helena Hamers works with image development strategies, considering both current and historical movements in visual arts and the context of digital media. In various ongoing series, she transfers images from the virtual to the physical space, blending digital and analog production techniques. Her creative process involves collecting and processing large amounts of digital image material—from social media screenshots and video stills to AI-generated content, stock photos, and her own photography. She uses these visual fragments to reflect on and expand the image worlds and aesthetics of our time.

For example, she creates installations by suspending aluminum composite panels, printed with image fragments and cut into specific shapes, from the ceiling with cords, intertwining them into three-dimensional image conglomerates. In layered acrylic glass works, she translates these images into analog drawings, assembling cohesive visual worlds from individual fragments. Using aluminum panels, she combines UV prints with faux fur to create sculptural wall pieces. In this way, her images acquire a fixed composition, size, and spatial plasticity—qualities that are absent in the virtual space.

Hamers feeds finished works back into AI image generators, requests variations, describes them with words, or merges them with other images. The results then find their way into new handcrafted works, creating a dialogue between human and artificial intelligence and a network of digital and analog processing steps.

Iris Helena Hamers (b. 1988, Meerbusch) graduated in Fine Arts from HFBK Hamburg in 2020. During her final year, she studied at the SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design in New York through the Art School Alliance scholarship program. Her works have been exhibited at the Capsule Program of Luxembourg Art Week; Nizza, Berlin; PAW Gallery, Karlsruhe; Wassaic Project, New York; Space n.n., Munich; Gemeinde Köln, Cologne; Easterfield Festival, Kunstverein in Hamburg; Bräunung Contemporary, Hamburg; Richard & Dolly Maass Gallery, New York; and Goldsmiths University, London.